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Floor Speech

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Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, according to ProPublica reporting, a Purdue student from China, Zhihao Kong, who goes by the nickname ``Moody,'' wrote a letter condemning the Chinese Communist Party for killing dissidents in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

We all know the famous image of the man who stood courageously, not in front of one tank--most of the images that ran in U.S. newspapers were of one guy standing in front of a tank. And if you just look at that image, you can assume that the tank commander is some nutjob who decided he was going to torment this kid. But if you actually look at the image, as you can through U.S. photo archives, and you pan back out, that first tank is one tank in a long, long, long, long line of tanks coming that this man stands courageously in front of. It is not one nutjob tank commander looking at this guy in Tiananmen Square; it is an autocratic government that is scared to death of the courage of free people. And that man stood there courageously as the Chinese Communist Party was murdering students in Tiananmen Square.

The Purdue graduate student, Moody, decided to write an open letter about that reminding students in America and around the world of what happened in Tiananmen Square.

Well, guess what happened next. After Moody published his essay, China's secret police decided to go visit his family and intimidate them so that they might put pressure on him, asking him, commanding him, coercing him, twisting the arms of his parents and loved ones, to stop talking about the truth, about what happened in Tiananmen Square in June of 1989.

When Mr. Kong refused to back down, other Chinese students at Purdue--not Chinese students in Beijing, Chinese graduate students at Purdue--decided that it was their obligation to harass Mr. Kong. They pursued him around campus, and they threatened to report him to the Chinese Embassy. Think about that for a second.

What do we think about Embassies as for? Two hundred countries around the face of the Earth, and when you are traveling and you have a lost passport or you suffer some, you know, petty crime or you have a family member who has a medical emergency back home, you call up your Embassy for help because you think these are people who love you. You are in a foreign place and you don't maybe speak the language and the Embassy is there to help you navigate a world where you might not know the language, the laws, or the customs.

What happened in the United States--a freedom-loving place--is that these Chinese students, Chinese nationals here in school at Purdue, decided that they thought it might be their job to contact the Chinese Embassy to tattle on Mr. Kong because the man had the courage to tell the truth. He had spoken online. He had written online. He had been involved in dissident events.

So what happened then, besides his parents being harassed by the Chinese secret police and besides graduate students following him around campus to intimidate him and threaten to report him to the Embassy, WeChat decided that they needed to block and suspend his account to cut off his communications with the outside world.

A few days before he was scheduled to speak at a Zoom commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the secret police went to visit his parents again, reminding them that they needed to make sure he put an end to his activism--read ``truth-telling.''

It is convenient for Americans to look the other way and stay silent in the face of this. We have seen many American professional sports leagues; we have seen Hollywood companies lusting after Chinese middle- class markets; we have seen the Marriott hotel chain agreeing to intimidate their own employees so that their employees didn't acknowledge what has happened in Hong Kong and the threats currently against Taiwan; we have seen this censorship using economic statecraft from Beijing to intimidate Americans and American companies and American institutions to do their bidding to suppress people who might tell the truth.

It is convenient to stay silent. Many of our institutions have pathetically agreed with Beijing that they would self-censor at Beijing's and Chairman Xi's bidding.

Well, guess who didn't do that. Purdue University decided they were not going to do that.

So there is a lot of bad stuff happening in the world because of the expansionistic desires of the CCP, and we have a lot of Americans and American institutions who are willing to be complicit in the CCP's desired expansionism, but Purdue didn't. So we should pause today, just for a minute, and celebrate that good news. We should celebrate that courage.

Mitch Daniels, former Governor of Indiana, current President of Purdue, decided that this was not OK, and it was important to tell the truth about this fact, what had happened, and that this wasn't OK.

I would like to read into the Congressional Record today President Daniels' letter to the Purdue campus 36 hours ago because we need a hell of a lot more truth-telling like this in American life. Here is Mitch Daniels and the Purdue leadership on behalf of not just Purdue but American values:

Dear Purdue students, staff and faculty,

Purdue [has] learned from a national news account last week that one of our students, after speaking out on behalf of freedom and others martyred for advocating for [freedom], was harassed and threatened by other students from his own home country [in this country]. Worse still, [this student's] family back home, in this case [the home being] China, was visited and threatened by agents of that nation's secret police.

We regret that we were unaware at the time of these events and [we] had to learn of them from national sources. That reflects the atmosphere of intimidation that we have discovered [surrounding] this specific sort of speech.

Any such intimidation is unacceptable and [it is] unwelcome on our campus. Purdue has punished less personal, direct and threatening conduct. Anyone taking exception to the speech in question had their own right to express their disagreement, but not to engage in the actions of harassment which occurred here. If those students who issued the threats can be identified, they will be subject to appropriate disciplinary action. Likewise, any student found to have reported another student to any foreign entity for exercising their freedom of speech or belief will be subject to significant [action].

International students are nothing new at Purdue University, which welcomed its first Asian admittees over a century ago. We are proud that several hundred international students, nearly 200 of them [from China], enrolled [at Purdue] again this fall.

But joining the Purdue community requires acceptance of [our] rules and values, and no value is more central to our institution or to higher education generally than the freedom of inquiry and expression. Those seeking to deny those rights to others, let alone to collude with foreign governments in repressing them, will need to pursue their education elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Mitch

Chairman Xi is a coward, and he sends his goons to intimidate people for telling the truth. That is who Chairman Xi is. He doesn't believe in the dignity of people. He doesn't believe that they are image- bearers of God. He doesn't believe they have the rights of free speech, religion, press, assembly, and protest. He believes that you must intimidate college students for telling the truth. If they are saying something to a small group of people 6,000 miles away, Chairman Xi is intimidated, and he is scared.

That student told the truth. We should celebrate that student. Mitch Daniels and Purdue University stood up to that kind of intimidation. We should celebrate that because that is what American courage looks like, and we need a whole hell of a lot more of it. We need a lot more people to look like the Women's Tennis Association, not to look like the NBA.

Thank you.

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